Leadership Quote by John Buchanan Robinson

In Robinson's calm, almost antiseptic phrasing, you can hear the Victorian-era state trying to make a messy social reality legible. He isn’t just defining “hire” as a technical term; he’s drawing a bright boundary around a practice that was rapidly reshaping everyday life: access replacing ownership. Industrial capitalism flooded markets with goods that were too costly, too specialized, or too fast-changing for many people to buy outright. “Temporary use” becomes the key move, a way to square mass production with uneven purchasing power.

The intent is managerial. By naming the arrangement, Robinson normalizes it, turning what could look like dependence or precariousness into a neutral transaction with a clean price tag. “Sometimes” is doing rhetorical work: it suggests an ordinary, sensible option, not a structural constraint. The definition quietly implies that markets can slice property into time-based portions, and that this slicing is not only acceptable but measurable, regulatable, and thus governable.

Subtext: the politics of obligation without ownership. When you buy a thing, you gain control; when you “buy only the use,” you accept terms, surveillance, and repossession as built-in features. That dynamic mattered in Robinson’s world of land tenancy, equipment leasing, and urban rents; it matters even more now, in subscription software, rented housing, leased cars, and “as-a-service” everything.

Contextually, a politician’s interest here isn’t philosophical. It’s administrative: contracts, consumer protection, taxation, and disputes all hinge on whether something is a sale or a hire. The line he draws is a legal lever - one that decides who bears risk, who captures value over time, and who gets to walk away with the asset when the clock runs out.